


An Undisturbed Life

by foolish_mortal



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-18
Updated: 2015-01-18
Packaged: 2018-03-08 02:38:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3192158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foolish_mortal/pseuds/foolish_mortal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thorin adores children, and Bilbo thinks they're a nuisance. For the prompt, "Bagginshield, old married couple."</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Undisturbed Life

**Author's Note:**

> For [surfingxthexweb](surfingxthexweb.tumblr.com).

Thorin adores children, and Bilbo finds them a nuisance (except for Frodo, who is the least silly of the bunch and an adventurer after his own heart). After a respectable decade of unanswered doors and cool unfriendly glances through the window, Thorin undoes all of Bilbo's good work almost overnight, his orderly quiet hobbit hole suddenly boisterous and cluttered with children coming and going.

Thorin is a novelty to them, a big strong tall foreign hobbit who lifts them high into the air whenever they please and patiently suffers the younger fauntlings' propensity to pull at his graying beard. Bilbo is forever finding dozens of carved dwarvish toys and trinkets underfoot, but Thorin laughs uproariously when Bilbo complains about disturbances of the peace, kisses Bilbo on the cheek, calls him 'my love', and apologises with the least amount of contrition that Bilbo has heard from anybody.

The problem is, the children begin turning up even when Thorin is away at the forges, trailing after Bilbo around the house with hundreds of questions and putting their perpetually sticky hands all over everything. Bilbo ends up working in the sitting room where he can keep an eye on his precious delicate books and inherited silk cushions. And they don't _go_ _away_ , not even after Bilbo inquires portentously about their families and hobbit holes elsewhere.

On clear warm afternoons that are kinder to his bones than most, Bilbo sits outside with his pipe and watches the children play in the bountiful arms of the spreading oak tree that Bilbo planted once long ago when he returned from the Lonely Mountain with a chest of gold under one arm and a dwarf king in tow. He remembers promising Thorin a brief respite before he would depart again for Erebor, and Thorin promised him a quiet undisturbed life henceforth, and happily it worked out that neither of them got at all what they wanted. And Bilbo catches himself reminiscing like an old sop grown long in the tooth.

"Well, I suppose you lot better stay for lunch," he grumps up at the oak tree, because hospitality was next to godliness for hobbits, and didn't Thorin just know it. "But just lunch, mind you. You'd better go straight home afterwards, understand? I'm looking at you, Griffo Boffin."

Sometimes Thorin comes home from the forge in the evening, smelling like metal and smoke, to find Bilbo seated in his favorite chair by the fireplace, all the local children gathered around him breathless and wide-eyed as Bilbo weaves away at a story about goblins and trolls, the coldly resplendent elf king in Mirkwood and the doughty people of Laketown.

Thorin folds his arms across his chest and drinks in the warm glowing hearth, the kitchen table laden heavy with the contents of their larder, and a hobbit with wisps of whitening hair who is beginning to look more than a little like a greengrocer. "And what was it that you got for all of your troubles, Master Baggins?" he interrupts when Bilbo's reedy voice fades into a whisper. "Doubtless such a journey there and back again is not without its rewards?"

"Why," Bilbo says, turning his eyes to Thorin in the doorway. "I got my 1/14th of the treasure, didn't I?"

Thorin laughs. "More than that, surely more than that."

"Yes," Bilbo says, looking entirely too pleased. "I daresay I burgled away the best bit right out from under their noses."

And it just so happens that however many times the story is told over the years, however many children gather around, eventually grow up, bring their own children to listen, however tall the oak tree climbs, the happy ending of Bilbo's tale always remains the same.


End file.
